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Tails no longer recommending balenaEtcher (tails.net)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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I am shocked by this - the quote in below is very concerning:

"However, in 2024, the situation changed: balenaEtcher started sharing the file name of the image and the model of the USB stick with the Balena company and possibly with third parties."

Can't see myself using this software anymore...

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[–] 14 points 2 years ago (15 children)

Never understood why you would use anything else. It's in coreutils!!!

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    There are people coming from Windows, which does not have dd.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)
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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    It's faster to drag and drop a downloaded ISO and choose the target from a dropdown, than do it on a command line. And get a progress bar. As much as command line is usually faster, it isn't in this case.

    Yes you can also get a progress bar on the command line but it's more typing again, and realistically you need to look the option up every time if you use dd once every 3 months.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Lmao. Uses a computer, typing is too much. It took more typing to write your comment than to craft a tab-completed dd command, even if you had to call the help menu to refresh your available options, jus' sayin'

    I get it though, the general public are scared of the big bad 'puter magic and need GUIs.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Let me try: Lmao. Uses a computer, still does stuff the slower way because learning new things is too difficult.

    To be serious, I am looking for the best solutions for my use cases, not adequate ones. Yes dd works perfectly fine and as you noted doesn't take long to use anyway. But just because it's fine doesn't mean other approaches aren't better.

    A GUI tool can offer or take a list of download URLs for common distros so downloading isn't a separate step, it can check if the target device is a flash drive and not a hard drive by mistake, it can automatically choose the optimal block size for the device, it can verify the process by reading it back from the device, can show you the current filesystem, label, and usage of the target device to confirm, it can handle flashing to multiple devices at the same time with separate and total progress bars.

    If I wanted to do all that on the command line it'd be quite a lot of commands or a sizeable script to write. Or I can use a simple dd command and lose out on all of the above. Either way it's a worse option. I will only use dd when a GUI tool isn't installed, or when I'm on a system without a DE.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    We will have to agree to disagree.

    At least you came back with reasons beyond "I don't like typing."

    ETA: > learning new things is too difficult.

    I could use this argument for folks that don't want to learn CLI as well, doesn't really track in either direction.

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